Paul reached for the knob, then swiveled his head in my direction. Our eyes locked and I knew he was reading my mind-dog, door, death. Life with Hannah is never dull. I clutched Speedo’s collar and held my breath as Paul turned the knob and… slowly, slowly… pushed open the door.
I was kneeling beside Speedo, my arms wrapped around his neck, my cheek pressed against the comforting warmth of his fur, so I didn’t see anything unusual at first.
Then Paul stumbled backward. “Sweet Jesus!”
With one hand grasping Speedo’s collar, I slowly rose until my eyes were level with Paul’s shoulder and I saw what he saw, a scene that is etched indelibly in my brain like a VCR frozen on Pause. “Who is it?” I asked.
“I think it’s Darlene.”
The naked body in the bathtub bore little resemblance to the Darlene I knew. It was the head that confused me, covered with thin graying hair that erupted from a nearly bald landscape of scalp in untidy tufts. But the nose and the chin… that patrician profile was unmistakable. Darlene’s eyes were closed and she lay in the tub peacefully, as if she were asleep.
“Is she dead?” I whispered.
“I think so.” Without touching the tub, Paul squatted on his heels and placed two fingers on Darlene’s pallid neck, just under her left ear. He nodded.
“Jesus!” And then I noticed something strange. “There’s no water in the tub!”
“I know.” Paul pointed to the plug, an old-fashioned rubberized disk on a chain. “It probably leaks.” Paul straightened his knees. “Come here, Hannah.” He pointed at something in the bottom of the tub. “What do you make of that?”
My breakfast was staging an encore, the acid combination of coffee and orange juice biting the back of my throat. I took a tentative step forward, then another. At the bottom of the tub, lodged between the drain hole and a smooth and still shapely foot, was an empty wineglass. “She must have taken something to drink into the bath with her.” Without thinking, I reached out to retrieve the glass, then pulled my hand back in horror.
I had drawn close enough to see her breasts, to notice that they bore the sunken scars of several incisions. Darlene had undergone biopsies, maybe even a lumpectomy. Tears stung my eyes. I felt profoundly sad for this woman, this pathetic object in a cold, hard bathtub who, only hours before, had been a living, breathing human being.
Contracting cancer is a life-changing experience, I knew firsthand. Maybe that’s what had turned Darlene so cold, calculating, and get-it-while-you-can. I was nothing at all like Darlene, but because of the cancer I suddenly felt a certain kinship to her.
“Oh, cover her up!” I wailed. “A towel. Anything!”
Paul shook his head. “Better not mess with the scene.”
I wiped my eyes with the hem of my sleeve. “I wonder how she died,” I sniffed. I was no expert, except for what I saw on TV during twice-daily reruns of Law and Order. Nothing about the body indicated foul play, at least not to me. Darlene’s face was composed and her eyes were closed. She could have been napping. There were no bruise marks on her neck. No stab wounds. No bullet holes. No blunt force trauma.
“She just died, Hannah. Maybe a heart attack, or a stroke.”
“But, what happened to her hair?”
Paul pointed to a wicker footstool under the window. On it, Darlene’s familiar blond hairdo lay in a damp heap, like a slumbering cat.
I stood there with Paul for what seemed like hours, tears cooling on my cheeks, the drip drip drip of the bathtub tap thundering like a bass drum in my ears. I studied the mildewed grout between the bathtub and the tile, the way the curtains were drawn back from the window with black ribbons tied in precise bows, the wallpaper where corseted Victorian ladies fussed with their hair, powdered their cheeks or adjusted their garters. I willed any one of them to speak up and tell us the story of what happened in this room. Finally, Paul grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the hall where Speedo waited obediently, his head on his paws. But not before I had noticed my father’s red toothbrush still in the holder over the sink, and his Norelco shaver dangling from the end of a cord plugged into an electrical outlet in the fluorescent light fixture over the medicine cabinet.
I rooted in my purse for the cell phone and dialed 911. Story of my life.
While we waited downstairs in the kitchen for the ambulance to arrive, Paul used a spatula and a wad of paper towels to clean up after Speedo. But all the time I was filling Speedo’s bowl with kibble and his dish with fresh water I was wondering: Where in bloody hell is my father?
9
Captain Younger of the Chestertown Police Department wanted to know the same thing. While his officers secured the scene upstairs and we waited for the Kent County medical examiner to arrive, Younger, dressed in dark blue uniform trousers and a light blue shirt, shotgunned us with questions.
The man was good. Almost before I realized what was happening, he had pried open the family closet and the skeletons had come rattling out in all their sordid splendor.
During the interview I sat stiffly on a two-cushion sofa next to Paul, our shoulders touching. Through the French doors I could see Speedo snuffling joyfully about in the patches of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme in Darlene’s immaculate garden. I wondered if I’d ever again experience such pure, mindless joy.
“Your father was living here, then?” Younger asked.
I nodded. “Most of the time.”
“So, where is he?”
“Captain Younger, I honestly don’t know.”
The Kent County medical examiner turned out to be a nurse from the local hospital. When she showed up, followed by the Maryland State Police crime lab, things got busy and Captain Younger let us go.
Halfway back to the hotel I grabbed Paul’s arm. “Holy Mother of God! I forgot to call Emily!” We found our daughter waiting inside, pacing the long central hallway from the front door of the hotel to the reception desk in the back, holding Chloe and frantic with worry. “I didn’t know what to do,” she complained. “I finally let them clear the plates away.”
After we explained what had happened and arranged with the hotel to stay another night, Paul suggested we go back into the restaurant and order some lunch, although it was well past two o’clock by then.
I had forked up the last bite of a poached pear tart when a white police cruiser with a splash of red on its rear quarter panel pulled into a parking space on High Street just outside the dining room window. I watched, chewing thoughtfully, as Captain Younger uncoiled himself from the driver’s seat, adjusted his sunglasses, slammed the door of the cruiser, then stepped onto the porch. “Oh, oh,” I said.
Paul eased himself out of his chair. “Best to get it over with.” He waylaid the officer at the door to the dining room, just as he passed by.
We invited Younger to join us for coffee. While I filled his cup, he pulled up a chair, moved some glassware, dirty dishes, and the salt and pepper shakers aside, then dealt some items out on the tablecloth in front of us. They looked like greeting cards encased in plastic sleeves. “What do you know about these?”
I started to pick up one of the cards, then withdrew my hand, waiting for his permission to touch them.